


wretched and divine

by paranypmh



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Blood, Blood and Violence, Canon Rewrite, Canonical Character Death, Character Death Fix, Character Development, Depression, F/M, Female Friendship, Female Protagonist, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Male-Female Friendship, Near Death Experiences, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Pre-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), References to Depression
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2020-11-22 03:03:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20867144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paranypmh/pseuds/paranypmh
Summary: It was the end of the line. Harsh words were exchanged, the world was warped for what felt like forever, and people had died. Despite the hope of those who had been taken by The Blip still ringing in the ears of millions, one death does not have that same promise — it is a shame he left someone behind who feels lost without him.





	1. PROLOGUE

She thought she was going to be safe. She thought that after the goddess Hela’s abrupt and forced matriarchy, after Surtur destroying the place she and so many others called home, after finally seeing the two princes of Asgard safe and ready to rule the kingdom wherever it was, she thought that life could continue. She didn’t care where it was, or when they got there, she just wanted to be able to stay somewhere and feel happy and _safe_.

But that’s not at all what happened.

She had been with the other Asgardians, helping the rock creature Korg and his friend Miek ensure the safety of the others who were travelling with them to wherever their new king Thor decided to take them. Thor and his beloved brother, Loki, were both gone, seemingly to plan what their next move was going to be. Where to settle down, where to go, finally, after years of living in fear.

Then, a thick black veil of..._something_ covered the ship. It was a shadow, but what casted it was unknown to everyone around the woman. Some of the Asgardians were scared, fearful of if this was another attack from something stronger than them—quite honestly, the woman couldn’t promise one way or the other, so she kept her mouth shut while she ran to search for the brothers.

Luckily for her, she did find them—the two were in front of a huge glass panel, both of their heads facing the thing causing the darkness in fear. She ran between the two of them, herself incredibly shorter than the two on either side of her.

“Kara,” the dark haired brother mumbled quietly, his eyes not moving from the ship behind the glass pane, “go back. This is not your battle.”

“Any battle of yours is a battle of mine,” she replied harshly, her tongue just as sharp as the god’s. He wasn’t smirking like he normally would have at her snarky reply. This threat, whoever this was before the ship full of Thor’s kingdom, was much more serious than Kara originally figured.

A rumble of what felt like a million hard, running footsteps came from behind the three Asgardians standing there as the ship levelled with theirs; it was the giant green being known as the Hulk, stopping harshly behind Kara and the brothers, watching the ship that levitated in front of the Asgardians.

There was suddenly an explosion; Kara screamed on the impact of what seemed to be hundreds of explosives on the glass panels. Both Thor and Loki ducked for cover, the latter taking the Asgardian woman’s smaller frame down with him with the swift motion of one arm, trying to protect her from the shrapnel that was falling from the blast. Her breath hitched in her throat while the dark haired god held her down, himself and his brother searching for any enemies who would come for them and their people.

“Hulk!” Thor grunted, and though she couldn’t see through the tears welling in her eyes, Kara felt the familiar rumbling as the being ran off to protect the civilians of Asgard on the rest of the ship. The world seemed to slow down, the head feeling fuzzy as Loki attempted to help her up. His bigger hands cupped her face, rubbing away her tears so he was clearer in her vision. The woman’s hands held his against her face, her fingertips gripping against his knuckles as she started up at him, her eyes fearful and her breath still hitching from holding back fearful sobs.

“Kara,” he said, his voice just above a whisper, “_run_. Save Asgard. Thor and I are going to do our best here, but you need to keep everyone else safe. Do you understand?”

The woman opened her mouth to speak, though she wasn’t sure what she would have said. She was interrupted by a gentle kiss against her lips from the god who was speaking to her, his hands still cupping her cheeks as her eyes fluttered closed and her hands caressed his, her fingers squeezing gently. The couple stood like that for a moment, lips interlocked, before his brother called for him. Loki pulled away carefully, Kara searching his eyes for some kind of answer. Some kind of promise that they’d be safe.  
She couldn’t find that.

“I love you,” she whimpered, the man placing another kiss against her skin, this time against her forehead. He didn’t return the sentence, but Kara knew him. She knew those eyes, those eyes that stared into hers as he turned quickly to join his brother and protect everyone on that ship with them from this strange new enemy. Kara turned on her heels, dashing to where the Hulk had run away to.

She didn’t know how long she had been running before something blunt hit the woman upside the head, knocking her out cold.

Kara finally woke up, her body sore and in a tremendous amount of pain. She wasn’t exactly sure of where she was; her head felt dizzy and frazzled, and she couldn’t think straight because of it. She knew that whatever was happening, wherever she was, she wasn’t alone. There were people speaking, though their voices were garbled as she tried to force herself to make out their words. She did her best to look over, trying to see something, _someone_, so she could make out what was happening.

Fire was what she saw first. Rather, it was what she _felt_ first, after she finally began to ignore the growing aches in her body—it was hot, and her Asgardian robes weren’t helping her in the slightest. She tried to shift her weight, becoming extremely dizzy and laying her back against the something she was against. A rock, maybe? It wasn’t unlikely, but Kara was in no position to check if she was right.

Someone weaved carefully through the rubble, muttering something about a “great Titan” with some name Kara couldn’t hear over the sound of her own heart beating in her ears and her head aching from the hit she sustained before she had passed out. Finally, her vision stopped blurring and she could see straight.

The Asgardian woman wasn’t the only one who suffered from injuries—Heimdall suffered as well, gripping at his gut in pain as the preacher made his way through the bodies of other Asgardians, many of whom were dead or close to it from the look of their bruised and broken bodies. Kara winced; she hated Asgard once upon a time, but she never, ever wanted to witness the people she disliked in such distasteful agony. Kara slowly forced herself to get to her knees, despite her blood pumping in her ears so loud, and crawled her way away from the bodies that surrounded her. It took everything in that woman’s body to not sob at every face she saw, including those of people she had just been so kind to. Another voice came through the crackling fires and Kara’s head pounding in pain, separate from the rest of the sounds that had slowly jumbled themselves together. This one was deep and authoritative, and somehow oddly familiar. Kara wasn’t in the right state of mind to remember who that voice belonged to, so she kept silent while she listened.

“The Tesseract, or your brother’s head, Asgardian,” the voice said, followed by the grunt of someone. Kara peeked her head out from the rock she was hiding behind, her eyes wide with horror.

Loki had his back to her—she almost couldn’t tell who it was at first, but she knew that greasy hair and that dramatic cape anywhere—while a giant, purple..._thing_ held the king of Asgard hostage in a deadly head grip in his massive palm. He looked familiar, too, but Kara’s head still ached as she struggled to stay quiet and not moan in pain from her wounds that had opened while she had crawled to her new spot. Thor had obviously been beaten into submission, from Kara’s guess; otherwise, he’d probably attack that purple monster with all the thunder he could muster just like he had done to his sister Hela back before Ragnarok.

Loki’s head looked between the authoritative figure and his brother, and somehow Kara felt that he had looked at her as well. Could he know she was there, watching him? He _was_ the god of mischief, it was quite hard to sneak up on him without him knowing the sneaker’s presence before they got near him. Kara definitely had never mastered the art of it in all the time she’d known him.

The god’s hand arose, and the Tesseract materialised into it. _Damn it, Loki,_ Kara thought to herself. Kara knew Loki and his need for power; she had been there when he went to Earth to get the Tesseract—she had _helped_ him get it, for Odin’s sake. She knew that Loki was getting it for something bigger than himself, as he had told her all those years ago when he first took it.

She never figured that statement would be taken so literally.

Loki walked slowly towards the thing holding his brother, his hand raised with the blue cube of some power unknown to the woman watching from behind the rock. Due to her position, Kara couldn’t hear much of what was said between Loki and the purple man—other than something about Loki not being Asgardian—before the familiar rumble of something running towards them ran past her.

_Thank Odin’s beard Hulk’s okay, I suppose,_ Kara thought as adrenaline took control of her body before she could think otherwise. She had watched Loki dive for his brother, the two rolled onto the ground and huffing. Kara ran to them both, her eyes practically spewing water by the time the three were together. She fell to her knees, her hands grabbing for Loki’s thin face as Thor coughed up some of his own blood beside her.

“Lo—” before Kara could speak, the purple thing’s goons grabbed hold of her and Thor, causing Kara to react with a gut-wrenched yelp of pain. She couldn’t see him very well anymore, but Kara could hear Loki yell out something towards her and his brother as they were taken away.

Thor and Kara suffered the same fate; the god and his almost-sister-in-law were trapped within a cage of rubble, magicked together to force them down with their mouths gagged shut. Kara felt defenseless, hopeless as she tried to wiggle free of her mini prison. Her arms and legs were forced into uncomfortable positions as she sat, staring at the monster with the gauntlet and his minions. Her mind felt much more dizzy than before; perhaps the smoke and the bloodloss she had been suffering from were finally settling in? Possibly, but she had to keep her eyes open. She couldn’t just pass out now, not when Loki and Thor and the rest of everything she cared about was in danger.

This was her battle too.

The powerful being ordered his minions to return to Earth for things he called “infinity stones”. Before the minions could leave, the greasy god of mischief arrived from within the fire and rubble around, announcing his presence to the group. Kara tried opened her mouth to speak, to say something, _anything_, but nothing came from her dried out throat behind her gag.

“You might want a guide.”

Kara couldn’t tell what he was doing; after being around Loki for as long as she had been, ever since his first attempt to rule over Asgard, she had been blessed with the ability to be able to tell which side he was on. This time was different, much different than the other times before this moment. The mischievous god continued on his speech to the beast, the man who Loki called “Thanos”, before he stopped in his tracks to look at his brother and the woman.

His eyes were trained between the two; Thor, his brother who, over the years of their upbringing and later adulthood, was both his boone and his bane, and Kara, his lover who was his strength when he was weak. He didn’t stop for long, using his silver tongue to promise Thanos his undying faith to the monster’s plan. Only seen to the king of Asgard and Kara, though, was the slowly materialising knife behind the god’s back.

_Loki, you tricky bastard._

The prince went for the throat; Kara almost felt relief that this would all be over, before Thanos used one of the stones in his gauntlet to stop Loki’s hand. Kara’s eyes widened, and though she couldn’t properly make out Loki’s features, she could feel his confusion and fear from the place she was forced to watch.

With no effort, Thanos flung Loki’s knife away, gripping the dark-haired man’s throat with his monstrous fist and those wretched stones placed in its gauntlet. Loki was lifted into the air, kicking and grunting as he reached for Thanos’s hand, clawing at it to break free from his deadly grasp. Kara’s eyes welled with tears; she still couldn’t tell what Loki was doing. Not this time.

Loki’s face was turning blue from suffocating, his once keen and beautiful eyes bulging, as his throat was held closed by the Titan. He couldn’t fight against Thanos anymore, his body almost limp as he gasped for air. He was only able to choke out a couple words.

“You will never be a god.”

_Crack._

Kara stopped being calm; from within her mouth gag she screamed, her tears free falling as Loki’s limp body was tossed to the ground like garbage in front of Thor and herself. The Titan had said something to the two hostages, but Kara’s sobbing drowned him out while she stared at Loki’s corpse. Thor had been yelling, too, right as the crack sounded from Loki’s neck, but Kara was too busy focused on the cadaver before them, laying limply on the rubble of what was once their spacecraft. As Thanos and his associates made their exit, Kara and the god of thunder were freed from their bindings.

Kara was faster than Thor, her body running on pure adrenaline to avoid the pain of its wounds and sitting in that uncomfortable position within the magicked rubble, as she continued to scream and cry for her lover. While she made her way to him, she cried out his name, hoping that she’d see something, any sign that Loki was still alive. She made it to his body, her shaking hands grabbing his face to force him to look towards her. His eyes were still so beautiful, but their bright blue hue was glossed over as he stared lifelessly into the woman. Kara couldn’t scream anymore, her voice hoarse as she continued to sob and clutch onto the man’s face. All she could do was stare at him, rubbing her thumbs over the god’s cold cheeks and pressing her forehead against his as she continued to hiccup the last of her sobs. Her tears fell onto his face, and Loki didn’t move.

Thor crawled beside Kara and his brother, choking on his own blood as he forced himself to speak and grab at his brother’s torso, shaking him in hopes that he’d be alive still, “Loki?”

Hearing his name just made Kara sob all over again, the fire around the three of them growing as she continued to hold his face, her heart aching for not only Loki’s death but for his brother. Thor had seen Loki die many times before, and every time he mourned his brother like he had died for the first time. Kara knew Loki’s tricks; she knew the little things he did to be a playful bastard, tricking everyone including his brother and all of Asgard into thinking he was dead twice up until this point.

She couldn’t tell this time.


	2. CHAPTER ONE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has mentions of alcoholism, death, and description of depression with bad coping habits. Please read at your own risk, and take care of yourself!

She wasn’t at that final battle. She refused to join Thor and the Avengers while they fought against the Titan that had killed Loki. The Titan who killed the one man that Kara felt she finally able to love with no filter of her feelings. The Titan who killed the only man Kara would fight for until the very end.

Was this the end?

It sure did feel like it.

Thanos had won. He got the infinity stones and did the horrible thing he had threatened to do, achieving his goal and winning against the Avengers. He had won against the Earth’s strongest defense.

From what Kara had seen and heard, half the Earth’s population, animals and people alike, had died. Rather, they had been “dusted”, as it had been referred by the Midgardian media. Life in the first year and a half of the incident was weird for everyone who remained; everyone on the Earth was abruptly forced to get used to a life without half their population, without their friends and family and loved ones. Walking through the streets of where she lived in Midgard, Kara had seen businesses close with memorials for those who were dusted while people cried for them on the streets. As far as Kara knew, schools were still in session, though administration was trying to figure out what to do if, or hopefully _when_, dusted students were to return. Should they just continue their schooling from where they left off? Should they restart their education from when they were dusted? This was a new problem, a _special_ problem, that no one knew how to handle, but were all trying their best to figure out.

Kara didn’t know how to handle it, and neither did the god of thunder. Thor had just lost two important people to him; Loki, his brother who not even Kara knew if he was still alive, and Kendall, the mute Midgardian girl who had stolen Thor’s heart some years ago. Kendall had been in the battle against Thanos and lost in the snap like many other people that Thor knew. Though he hated talking about it as the years went on, the god had once confided in Kara about what had happened that day in one of his drunken nights that were becoming more and more common.

His once short hair had grown long again, the ends of it touching his jawline now, but he hadn’t showered in what was probably a week. His hair was just about as greasy as his brother’s had once been, his once bright eyes sunken with dark circles and his body still bulky but weak with his many, many problems that he faced with Thanos’s arrival. Kara wasn’t in much better shape herself; her hair had gone unbrushed for about as long as Thor went unshowered, her eyes just as sunken in and sleepless as his were. The two sat in the god of thunder’s living room in his cottage in his new kingdom he had named New Asgard, barely speaking and just sitting together. The god had asked Kara to come see him so they could talk about what happened in their own mini support group for each other, and though Kara didn’t think she could speak for her own problems without breaking down into tears, he offered that she could speak her mind as well. Thor took a long swig of his drink, alcohol of some kind from Kara’s guess, before speaking.

“We were fighting,” Thor mumbled, relaxing back into his recliner and refusing to let go of his alcohol, “and Kendall...she looked so powerful. So beautiful and strong. Her mask had been ripped from her face in rage, you know? And she was doing the screaming thing—blasting rows upon rows of those dreadful enemies to their backs with the might of her voice. I would come in after her, using Stormbreaker and my thunder to mow down the enemies that still dared to try and run towards her for a second round. I would look at her every once in a while, and she gave me a smile or two before mowing down more enemies that wanted to attack her. That beautiful smile was all I needed to keep fighting. We were unstoppable...and I left her to face Thanos myself. For what he did to—”

Thor had to stop himself from bringing up Loki. Kara was staring at him intensely, unblinking and her hands placed calmly in her lap, but even he knew in his foggy memory that the mention of Kara’s late love would be too much on her weak heart. He barely knew what to do or what to say when she sobbed to him when he was sober, so no telling what he’d do when he was drunk.

Thor cleared his throat awkwardly, skipping over his mention of Loki to continue his story, “I had him, Kara. I had Thanos in my hands. I tried cutting off that arm of his, the one with the gauntlet with the stones. I tried to make him suffer like he made everyone else, not only on this planet, but all the others that he had attacked. But...I…”

This time, Thor began crying, tears boiling over his eyelids as he relived the memories he had tried to get over in the last year. He couldn’t mention how he should have aimed for the Titan’s head, or how he watched with his own two eyes as Thanos snapped those damned purple sausage fingers, or how he went running for Kendall and how he wasn’t fast enough to touch her delicate hand that reached for him before she blew away into dust like many others around them. The woman across from the crying god walked over, kneeling down and touching his arm. He could barely see through his tears, but he knew her look was soft, gentle, understanding.

She knew.

“You don’t have to continue, Thor,” she mumbled, her voice hoarse from many nights of her own crying, “I know. It’s okay, I know.”

Thor went to rub his own face of his snot and tears, but Kara moved his hand lightly before rubbing his face herself with the sweatshirt she had been wearing. Her touch was gentle, something Thor noticed as she rubbed away the tears that continued to roll down the god’s face. He missed having someone be so gentle to him.

“Shhhh,” she cooed, rubbing the tears away, “I know.”

“I miss them, Kara,” Thor choked out, his voice abnormally quiet compared to his normal booming voice, “Not just Kendall or Loki. I miss all of them. Everyone who we lost...I want them all back.”

Kara felt her heart jump into her throat at the mischievous god’s name. She hiccuped, tears involuntarily started to fall as she continued looking at the disheveled god in front of her. She tried to force it down, but she couldn’t help but begin to sob over him like she had done for many, many nights since his death.

“Shit,” Thor said quickly, rubbing her tears away just as quickly as they arrived, his thumb rubbing the face of the woman his brother once loved. His hands were much bigger than Loki’s were, thicker and calloused with thousands of years of wielding Mjolnir and, as of the battle with Thanos, Stormbreaker. Kara quite honestly would have preferred Loki’s hand wiping away those awful tears, but she didn’t really have a choice in the matter.

“I’m sorry, Kara, I didn’t—”

“No,” Kara choked out as she sniffed, moving Thor’s hand from her face as she stood up, “no, no, it’s okay. If anyone can say his name around me, it’s you. You’re family to me, Thor. You’re all I have left.”

“You’re all I have left too, Kara.”

  


That was the calm before the storm.

It was now about four years after the snap; life had continued without everyone who had been dusted in the Thanos situation, albeit many still struggled to be normal again. Businesses opened up with new staff, schools continued their education with a “Dusted Students” plan for if or when their dusted students returned from wherever they were. Though she never went to one, Captain America—or rather Steve as he preferred to be called nowadays—started a support group for people who had lost someone to Thanos, and many other cities followed in his footsteps. God knew these Midgardians needed something like that in this time of need.

New Asgard was still “home”, though Kara hated referring to it as such. Nothing felt like home; it was a little over four years after his death, but Kara still kept expecting Loki to pop up behind her like he always did and say something to startle her, like “boo” or even just “hello”. She wanted to be able to turn around and see his face, pale and beautiful like he always was, and just see his bright, lively green eyes. She desperately wanted to giggle after being surprised by his sudden but welcome appearance, wrapping her arms around his torso and pulling the man into a tight hug as he pressed a kiss to the top of her head, his own arms wrapping around her tinier body. She wanted that. She wanted him. And, though Kara rarely talked to him anymore, she knew Thor wanted him back, too.

Thor’s alcoholism had just gotten worse over the years; he showered less often, ate more junk, rarely left his little cottage, rarely did _anything_ anymore besides wallow in his own sadness alone in the dark. Kara would sometimes pass by his cottage and hear him sobbing, crying out some of the names of those he had lost. She never went inside, though, because she knew he needed this time alone to cry, just like how she would later that same night. Kara knew her almost-brother-in-law was depressed and struggling; but even if she tried to help him, tried to get him to talk to her in their mini support group, he’d just push her away.

This time got a little more vocal.

“Thor, just listen to me!” Kara said, her hair just as messy as Thor’s was from their yelling fight, the two of them now on opposite sides of the cottage’s living space and staring each other down, waiting for each other’s next move. The woman’s eyes were wide, and she felt that familiar hiccup arising in her chest as well as the familiar burn of tears arising from her tear ducts. She wasn’t about to cry in the middle of an argument with the god of thunder staring her down with angry, piercing eyes, but she knew she couldn’t control it if it happened.

“No, I’ve done my listening, Kara,” Thor huffed, taking another deep swig of his alcohol when his voice was hoarse from his yelling and his endless nights of crying, “I’ve done my listening to you and about your pain and about everything that’s wrong with you. You’re a selfish little wench. You can’t even fight! You didn’t fight Thanos. Only time you had laid eyes on that dreadful Titan was when he killed Loki in front of us. You didn’t see him snap everything away from you. The friends you made, the love you had found, the bonds you had made—all gone within seconds.”

Kara couldn’t control the tears that made their way out of her eyes when she fired back with her own response, “My experience with Thanos is just as traumatizing as yours, Thor. Loki-”—there was that godforsaken hiccup as Kara began to cry mid-sentence—“-Loki was...no, Loki _is_ everything to me. He understood me. He _knew_ me. He _cared_ about me. Unlike you, you disgusting, wretched _oaf_ who does nothing but drink mead and sulk about someone who could come back to you! Loki can _never_ come back to me! To _us_! He’s gone, forever, and I’m just as—”

“Stop lying!” Thor cut her off before she could continue, his voice as loud as the storms he reigned over and his words less slurred, “You very well know Loki and his tricks. You’re the damned man’s _lover_, Kara, stop trying to hide him! Do you hide him in that little cottage of yours, hogging him for yourself and never allowing him to leave in fear of what may happen? Scared to let him see me, his brother, a disheveled, unkempt mess who is left mourning so many friends and his entire family?”

“Thor, you have _always_ been my family,” Kara’s tears were uncontrollable now, her eyes burning and her voice shaking with each word that she managed to croak out, “I know what Kendall-”

“Don’t you _dare_ say her name,” Thor tried to look fierce and strong to Kara, to intimidate her and keep her from talking, but Kara knew what was underneath that guise. That depressed, broken man who had lost everything quite literally from the snap of one's fingers.

“I know what she meant to you. What Loki meant to you. What _everyone_ meant to you. But that doesn’t mean you can just invalidate me and what I saw, what we _both_ saw, and say that my pain is any less than yours just because—”

“Leave.”

Kara was taken aback, tears still rolling down her face but her sobs slowly subsiding, “Pardon?”

“_Leave_!” his voice boomed this time, cracking like the thunder he controlled, causing the knot in Kara’s chest to tighten as she forced herself to keep down her subsiding sobs, “you are no longer welcome here in New Asgard. Leave and never return, not unless you’ve brought something meaningful with you.”

Kara was confused, but if anything, she was upset. Upset and angry and depressed and everything under the Midgardian sun, all the emotions she had been so good at forcing down to the bottom of her heart, bubbled up as her tears spilled out harder than they already were. Losing Loki and half the Midgardian population had taken a toll on her mental state as it was, but the one person she had left that she was close to, the one person left who knew the side of Loki that was good and changed, was fighting against her. Thor was forcing her away before she could try and help him any longer, forcing her out of his sight, pushing away the painful memory of his lost brother that lived with the small woman.

Finally, someone made their way into Thor’s cottage, trying to break the tension in the room that had poured in like molasses. It was Valkyrie, or Brunnhilde as she had confided in Thor and Kara not long after the snap, dressed in her everyday clothing that she wore when tending to New Asgard’s people and problems. She had to do that, mostly because of Thor’s refusal to leave his tiny home.

“Oi, are you two done yelling in here? We can hear you both at the docks-” she took a moment to look between Thor and the girl he had just banished from New Asgard, seeing Thor’s rage boiling over like a pot of water and Kara’s tears spilling over her cheeks like a dam had been broken. Valkyrie wasn’t sure who to be upset with, so she just awaited someone to speak from either side of the room.

“Valkyrie,” the so-called king of New Asgard finally spoke up from the silence, refusing to meet his eyes with Kara at this point, “take this witch here outside of New Asgard. She is no longer welcome here until she returns either able to fight or with my brother. If she returns with neither, she will be captured and imprisoned for eternity for treason.”

Kara couldn’t even speak up to fight Thor’s orders. Valkyrie took a final glance at the flustered Thor before taking Kara’s arm with surprisingly careful and gentle hands. The women made their way out of the king’s cottage, down the winding road that lead out of New Asgard’s little village in the hills.

Kara turned to face the dark haired woman, her body shaking with forced down sobs that threatened to escape. Their entire walk to their spot, Kara’s tears never stopped. She looked at Valkyrie with sad eyes, red from crying and sunken with dark circles from her small amount of sleep she had gotten in the past four years.

“I—”

Valkyrie shook her head slowly, ‘shush’ing the smaller woman before her before offering a smile to ease her nerves after the argument in Thor’s cabin.

“Hush. You’ll just make this harder for the both of us.”

Valkyrie touched the other woman’s arm, causing Kara to tense up. Valkyrie’s smile didn’t falter as her eyes looked at Kara with a look that tried to encourage her broken spirits, trying to be as comforting to the other Asgardian woman as she could. Valkyrie wasn’t exactly good at comforting people, her strengths being more so in fighting than in social situations like this one, but right here in this moment, Kara needed someone’s kind words after what Thor said in his cottage.

“Go prove you’re strong. Thor isn’t in his right state of mind right now, but deep down he knows you’re strong. _I_ know you’re strong. That’s why Loki liked you, why he loved you. Loki doesn’t like weak people, and if anyone knows that, it’s you, Kara. That man saw something in you that Thor can’t see right now. Go prove that Loki was right about you.”

Kara went to speak again, but only hiccuped a loud sob as she cried into her hands. Valkyrie was unsure of what to do, so she stood there with the girl, letting her cry. After a few minutes that felt like hours, Kara looked up from her crying, rubbing her eyes with her baggy jacket sleeve to force away the tears.

“You’re right. I’m strong. And I’m going to prove it. I’m going to prove it to Thor and to you and to everyone here in New Asgard. I’m going to come back so much stronger, Brunnhilde, I’ll prove it.”

The other woman smiled, giving Kara’s shoulder a hearty pat to try and comfort her, “I know you will. But you can’t do that if you’re just standing here telling me about it.”

The brunette woman nodded, turning on her heel to follow the winding path to who knows where. She wasn’t sure of where she was going or how long she would be gone, but Kara knew that she couldn’t return to New Asgard or to Thor without something to show for it. No matter how long it took, she was going to get stronger. She had to.

For Valkyrie. For Thor. For Loki.

For herself.


	3. CHAPTER TWO

The nearest city wasn’t crazy far from New Asgard. It wasn’t an easy walk, what with the little hidden village being so far from any civilization, but Kara was able to hitchhike and catch a couple rides from some kind strangers. She rarely spoke when she rode with them, and they only took her some ways before dropping her off at a separate bit of the highway, but there was one special driver who had somehow made Kara feel safe.

The driver had seen the little woman when returning from somewhere past where she sat against the road, holding up her thumb like she had seen others do. The driver pulled over, rolling down her passenger side’s window to speak to the little woman. Her English was broken, being that she was Norwegian, but it was enough to be understood.

“Need a ride, hun?”

Kara nodded, her voice dried out and hoarse, and made her way into the truck. She buckled herself in, the driver making her way back onto the highway to keep going.

“Where ya headed?”

“The nearest city,” Kara croaked out, her voice soft because it hurt too much to speak much louder. The driver tapped an unopened water bottle in the cup holder next to her.

“Take that, sweetheart,” she said, her eyes unmoving from the road, “sounds like you need it a lot more than I do.”

Kara nodded, taking the bottle and taking greedy gulps of water. It felt good as it went down, and the little lady mumbled out a thank you. The driver only smiled.

“You okay, honey? You don’t look amazing. Did-?”

“Just a little hard,” Kara interrupted before the driver could keep talking, “I lost...I lost a lot of people when it happened. I just need somewhere to go...somewhere away from everything.”

“I know how you feel, hun,” the driver tapped her rearview mirror, showing a picture of a young girl smiling with a piece of watermelon in supposedly the summer sun. Kara tilted her head, listening to the driver’s story, “that’s my baby girl, Nora. She was everything to me. For a while, it’s always been just her and me since her dad walked out. She was my everything, and I’d do just about anything for her. But...then she was dusted. It’s been real rough without that little sunshine in my life for the past few years.”

Kara’s lips parted slowly, her eyes welling up with tears again like the uncountable amount of times before. “I’m so sorry, Miss.”

“Call me Ella,” the driver, Ella, smiled to herself. She glanced over at the guest in her truck, who was still staring at the picture of Nora, “And what should I call you?”

“Kara,” the woman said slowly, looking back at the driver, “my name is Kara.”

“That’s a new one. Unique,” Ella smiled to herself, her eyes glued to the road, “I like it. It’s very nice to meet you, Kara. Anywhere you trying to specifically go in the city? Any specific landmarks or an address or…?”

“Anywhere is nice,” Kara looked out the window, taking another drink of water, “anywhere but where I was.”

Ella nodded slowly. For a while the truck fell into silence, the only sound being the wind that pushed against the truck and and the garbled talk of the hosts on Ella’s radio. The driver finally looked at her guest, opening her mouth to speak.

“You recognize me, don’t you?”

Ella was startled from Kara’s bluntness, how it almost felt like the woman was staring at her without actually looking in her direction, but she cleared her throat and looked back towards the road, “I...you were with that one god who tried to take over New York all those years ago, weren’t you? The little actress who would cause distractions so he could do those nasty things?”

Kara cleared her own throat, shifting in her seat. Of course Ella recognized Kara for who she was in the past, back when she was trying to survive in the harsh world where she knew nothing but Loki, nothing but his plan for power for some unknown force, a force that Kara now knew was Thanos.

“Yes, that was me. But you don’t have the whole story.”

“Then what _is_ the whole story?”

Kara’s chest tightened. She was going to relive all the memories she tried so hard to ignore, from when she stood up to Loki and told him she would join him to the first time he’d actually hold her hand without dragging her somewhere to force her to act as a damsel in distress so he could continue his plan. Her first moment of falling in love with him, the heated kiss she gave him when she was allowed to see him during his hiding out dressed as his father. She’d relive it all if she told Ella.

But she had to.

The Asgardian took a deep, shaky breath, trying to relax herself before she cried again for the millionth time in those four years.

“His name was Loki, and he had been lied to his entire life.”

  


Talking about Loki and his trials and tribulations with Asgard and his brother took the entire ride until they got to the city to tell. Kara did her best not to cry as she talked about her late love, but she couldn’t help it when it got to the point where Thanos arrived in the story.

“I had...I finally had him back,” Kara sniffed, rubbing her fist against her face to stop the tears that had already started to fall, “he had been gone for so long and I finally had him back. And I was so happy...I didn’t know where Thor was going to take us, but as long as it was with Loki, and as long as Loki was safe, then I was happy. But…that monster came. That damned thing that took away everything, not only from me, but from everyone here on Earth. His name is Thanos, he’s responsible for the dusting of everyone. Nora...she was taken from you by that thing. And he...he…”

Kara began to choke up, and Ella touched the girl’s knee, “Hey, Kara, sweetheart, look at me.”

The Asgardian woman looked at the driver. Ella’s eyes were gentle, somehow knowing of the pain Kara went through and currently still was. The woman’s hand touched Kara’s face, rubbing away some of her tears that were still free falling before facing the road again.

“I don’t know this Loki guy as well as you do. But he obviously meant a lot to you, and I can respect that. I thought he was a monster for all these years, ever since he tried to take over New York. But...you knew a side of him that I—or we, all of us here on Earth— never got to see. And I’m not going to force you to tell me anything more of what happened unless you want to. But just know that you’re not the only one suffering. People around here can help you. You just have to be willing to look, and they have to be willing to listen.”

Kara did everything she could to not fling her small body at Ella and hug her, cry into her shoulder and tell her thank you for listening. For the past four years, she had no one to talk to about what happened. Thor was always too drunk or blaming Kara for Loki’s ‘hiding’, Valkyrie didn’t know where to begin to help, and Kara wasn’t sure of the whereabouts or how to contact the remaining Avengers that weren’t dusted, or if they’d even listen to someone like herself who had once been their enemy. Kara had been alone for so long, she didn’t know where to turn for help and, instead, bottled it all deep within her core.

“Thank you, Ella,” Kara sniffed, smiling a broken smile at the driver, “thank you.”

“Of course, sugar,” Ella turned on her blinker, pulling over and letting Kara hop out onto one of the city’s many sidewalks, “and if you need me, I go down that road every weekday for work. That’s probably the best way to find me since you don’t have a phone or a computer to contact me with.”

Kara nodded, rubbing the snot from her face with her sleeve again, “Yes, yes, of course. Thank you again, Ella. It means...it means so much to me that you listened.”

“Sure thing, sweetie. Now go find some help for whatever you’re going through.”

Kara nodded, closing the truck’s door before heading down the street. She wasn’t walking for long before she suddenly felt herself free falling.

  


The woman landed roughly on her stomach on hardwood flooring in front of a grand set of stairs, groaning in pain.

“Damn it,” she whined, rolling to her side and holding her gut, “what the hell-?”

“You,” a voice said from above the woman on the floor. Kara looked up, faced with a woman with seemingly angry eyes and her hair cut short to just below her earlobes. The Asgardian on the floor scrambled up to her feet despite her aching stomach, holding her arms up as if she was ready for a fight. The other woman, clad in strange robes, raised up her hands in defense.

“_Whoa_ there, Miss Kara of Asgard,” the woman said, speaking slowly and clearly as to not freak out Kara more than she already was, “relax. I am not your enemy. I have brought you here because I want to help you.”

Kara lowered her hands slowly, standing up straighter and staring at the woman in front of her. How did she know her name? Or that she was of Asgard and not Midgard? Kara wracked her brain, trying to remember where she may have met this woman from. Nothing was coming to mind.

“Do you know me from-?”

“The attack on New York back in 2012? Yes, of course, anyone who was around back then knows your face and how you helped Loki of Asgard get the Tesseract and attempt to take over New York. But that’s not why I know your name, though it did help when I was searching for you to know what you look like.”

Kara’s heart thumped harder against her chest at the mention of Loki. Kara did not know this woman or her intentions, or even where Kara currently was, but obviously this woman knew something.

The lady smiled to herself, a sad smile that had no joy in it, before she shook her head, “Where are my manners? I am Katalina Kingsley. I am a woman of the mystic arts, and I stay here with—”

Katalina stopped, chewing on her bottom lip for a moment. Kara took a moment to realize why she had hesitated.

“I _stayed_ here with Doctor Stephen Strange, a master of the mystic arts. I doubt you know him yourself, but he knew Thor and Loki. He knew they were strong, just as he was. And he told me...he told me, before he left to assist your friends in the battle against Thanos, to keep on the lookout for Loki’s accomplice from the New York attack in 2012. He told me that you’d be here, and that you’d need help.”

Kara’s lips parted to speak, but she couldn’t say anything. She was left there, staring at the woman who seemed to know a lot more than she let on about the Asgardian woman in front of her.

“And it seems to me, Miss Kara,” Katalina took a couple steps closer, herself much taller than Kara’s tiny, fragile frame, “that you need a _lot_ of help.”


	4. CHAPTER THREE

Miss Katalina Kingsley was a nice lady. She was blunt and snarky, but to Kara, that was perfect. For the past few years of her life without Loki, she didn’t have anyone do something towards her in a positive manner. Anyone to do anything, say anything, to at least try and make Kara feel like everything was going to be okay someday. It didn’t have to be today, or tomorrow, or this week, or this month, or this year, it just had to be _someday_. No one had given her that, and likely never would have back in New Asgard where she spent most of her time wallowing in her own self pity or trying to get Thor to listen to her.

Katalina had no problem talking about herself or how she met Doctor Stephen Strange. How she was a master of the arts like him, how he was something called the “Sorcerer Supreme”, and what those words actually meant in terms of what she and Strange could do as far as powers were concerned. She showed off the ring on her left hand, calling it the Sling Ring.

“In fact, this ring is how I brought you here,” Katalina said. Kara tilted her head, taking a sip of her tea with an eyebrow raised. The other woman arose from her spot on her chair, holding up her hands and moving them in a circular motion. Suddenly, a portal opened, its thin edges crackling with orange energy. On the other side was somewhere else—Kara wasn’t sure of where, but it definitely wasn’t somewhere she had been.

It definitely wasn’t on Earth, either.

“Where...is that?” Kara questioned, standing from her spot and setting down her tea onto its saucer. Katalina only smiled, motioning her hand towards the portal.

“This, Miss Kara,” she answered, stepping into the portal herself, “is Earth’s sister planet from another galaxy. It is almost completely identical, minus the existence of humans like myself or of most animals. Come, and I’ll show you it’s real. Oh, and no worries, the atmosphere is exactly like Earth’s, so neither of us will die from weird air that could kill us in seconds.”

Kara was hesitant at first, scared to follow the woman she barely knew through an intergalactic portal to another planet. Katalina stood there, one foot on the sister planet before the shorter woman made her way to the portal. The mystical woman took Kara’s hand, helping her through the portal to the new planet.

The smaller woman was taken aback by how beautiful the world was; it was breathtaking, far off rolling hills blanketed in thick, green grass that made the hills look like they were covered in a fuzzy green blanket. There weren't too many trees, but the area Kara and Katalina stood seemed to be in a meadow of picture perfect green grass with a compact amount of flora. The air was warm, and the three suns that kept the sister Earth alive were all comforting and beautiful.

Kara tilted her head back; for the past four years, she found it hard to go out in the sunshine and, though this planet was different than the one she had been living on, it still felt like Earth and its sunshine that gave her too many memories to count. It reminded her too much of all the times on Asgard when she would perform with her acting group in the warm midday sun in front of King Odin and his two sons, all three watching Kara and her troupe sing and dance and act for them with stories of Asgard and its people. It reminded her of the times where she would be allowed, like the rest of the troupe, to meet the king and the princes and speak with them about the performance and what they’d like to see more of. It reminded her of the first time she talked to Loki, back before he tried to rule over Asgard or Earth and before he became the so-called “monster” everyone would someday claim he was, and how he told her that her singing was beautiful, and how she was flustered red and told him thank you. It reminded her of how she felt with Loki; how, of him and his brother, the dark haired prince was the one to compliment her performance while Thor took his time with Kara’s female colleagues, how Loki always went to her first every single time and how special she felt because of it. It reminded her of everything she had left behind when she joined Loki for her own selfish, thoughtless purposes. Back before she knew Loki, before she _cared_ to know him. Back before she loved him.

Back before she lost him.

A tear rolled down Kara’s cheek, but Katalina ignored it, feeling strange about wiping away the Asgardian guest’s tear. She simply raised her face to the three suns in a similar way to the woman beside her, sighing contentedly. Her sigh broke Kara from her day dream about Loki and how, when the Asgardian sun hit his face, he looked so beautiful. How he always looked beautiful.

“I know you miss that man. Loki, I mean,” Katalina said quietly, trying not to make Kara start crying with her mention of the god, “I know he was something to you. Something important, meaningful.”

Kara looked down, her lips pressed in a straight line. She didn’t know if she could smile or smile at the mention of Loki; he was dead, truly dead, and the thought of it was enough to break her down into tears every time she thought about it, but the memories she had just relived of his handsome face back when he was alive would have normally been enough to make the woman smile, even if it was just for a moment. Kara only looked at Katalina and nodded, “I miss him. I’ve missed him since the moment Thanos cracked his neck and threw him at the ground in front of me and left him without life. As soon as he was gone, I missed him.”

Katalina nodded, finally closing the portal behind the two of them. Kara tilted her head slightly, confused by the woman’s actions, but the other only smiled at her.

“New York has too many memories for the both of us,” Katalina sat herself in the sister Earth’s grass, “let’s stay here a while.”

  


The two women sat on the ground of the sister Earth, the two of them talking about everything up until the point of Thanos’s arrival. Kara talked about her history with Loki, how she had joined him out of selfishness, how she didn’t care that Loki was hurting and how she only cared about herself back when Loki really needed her to care about him.

“I was so...self-absorbed,” Kara picked at the grass under her, not looking up at Katalina as she spoke, “I didn’t care about Loki or what he was planning or why he was planning it. I just...I wasn’t about to let Loki’s plans interfere with everything that I had worked so hard for, interfere with how I worked so hard to be the best actress in Asgard. When I went to Loki, I told asked to speak to him privately and I told him that I knew of the secret passages that connected Asgard to the other realms, that I knew of those same passages that the gatekeeper Heimdall couldn’t keep safe even if he tried. How I knew he was planning on harming Asgard. And he seemed...almost scared. He had always been such a straight-faced, unamused man, always so calm and collected, it was odd to see him scared that a little nobody actress knew of his plan.

“So he made me join him. He said that I could be part of his plan if I promised not to let anyone know of it. He promised to keep me safe from Asgard’s destruction since I knew so much. And quite honestly...I didn’t think he’d keep his word, himself being the god of mischief and known for not being able to keep his promises. But he did. He kept me safe when the Frost Giants arrived—thought I didn’t know of them when I joined Loki—and he kept me safe, promising to take me to Midgard when it was all over. I hadn’t been sure why he’d take me here, of course, until he informed me I was useful. That I could be a scapegoat of sorts.”

“Scapegoat?” it was the first time Katalina had spoken up during Kara talking about herself, causing the little woman to jump. Katalina smiled nervously, “I’m sorry, continue, I didn’t mean to interject.”

“No, no,” Kara looked down, staring at her hands as she remembered 2012’s happenings, “I was about to explain. He wanted to use me and my acting ability. He wanted me to act as the innocent damsel so, if someone were being rather...unruly, I would jump in and distract them while Loki used his…_ways_ to make them comply.”

Katalina slowly nodded, “So...you were just a toy for him. Back when you two first properly interacted, anyway.”

Kara nodded quietly, “Yes, that’s right. Just...a toy.”

“So how did that become...you know?”

Kara scoffed, “How did that become us being romantically involved?”

Katalina nodded, thanking whatever Lord above that the woman before her knew what she was asking. Kara’s face flushed a soft pink, looking back down at the grass she had been picking at.

“It’s...complicated,” she finally said after a moment of gathering her thoughts, “as you know, after what happened in New York, Loki was imprisoned back in Asgard’s kingdom. Odin viewed me more as a mindless servant to Loki rather than an actual threat to Asgard, and I was simply put under house arrest for some months. I had lost my friends I made, if I could even call them that, and I lost Loki who I had...admittedly realized was more than just a threat to my hard work anymore. Whenever New York happened, I realized that he was doing this all for more than himself. Something else was on his mind, and he was determined to prove a point to it. Then he escaped from prison with his brother, trying to help a woman Thor had been in love with at the time. I wasn’t at the battle they fought, but Thor returned to Asgard mourning the loss of his brother a second time, claiming one of the Dark Elves they had been fighting killed him. I...honestly, before I found out the truth, I mourned him too. I mourned him almost as intensely as I mourn him now.

“But then...he came to me. He was alive, breathing, and I tell you, Katalina, I just about cried when I saw his face again, though I didn’t realize why until later. He came to me—shapeshifted into the form of his father, mind you—in my little cottage in Asgard, the one I had been given by King Odin in order to keep an eye on me during my house arrest. Then he turned back into his normal form, the form that I had always known, and I…”

Kara’s face turned red with embarrassment, realizing that she had been going on and on for so long about Loki and how she fell in love with him. Katalina tilted her head, squinting her eyes, “What’s wrong?”

“I...I suppose I’ve never told someone Loki and I became romantically involved,” Kara licked her lips, shaking her head, “I’ve never had to explain the story before. Loki had explained it to Thor himself when their sister Hela took over Asgard, and I never really had anyone else to explain it to. I’ve never had someone who cared to listen to me that didn’t already know.”

Katalina smiled, the first real smile Kara had ever seen on the woman in the few hours she’d known her, “Well, I’m here to listen. Go on, I want to hear the end of this. You’ve got me interested.”

Kara smiled to herself, her face still flustered as she continued the story, “I kissed him, Katalina. I couldn’t control myself. I jumped up into his arms and I just...I kissed him. He felt so cold, probably because he was a Frost Giant as I learned after joining his side, but he was so...careful. So gentle. He kissed me too, and I felt my body heating up with embarrassment and I couldn’t help but pull away from him and bury my face in his shoulder. That bastard, being as snarky as he was, asked me if I missed him or not. It took everything in my power to not slap him upside the head, but I was too busy being so happy about his reappearance that I don’t know if I physically could have.

“He trusted me with his secret that he was playing as his father, tricking all of Asgard and his brother once again with a fake death. I felt so special, being the one he trusted with such a secret. It wasn’t like I had a bunch of friends to tell, I suppose—at that point, I was Kara of Asgard, the woman who helped the monstrous god of mischief try and rule a kingdom that he’d ultimately fail doing. No one ever questioned me or even looked in my direction when I left that cottage. I didn’t tell Thor until later, when all of Asgard was on that ship we were travelling on after Ragnarok, that I knew all that time where Loki was. He wasn’t angry at the time but...recently I believe he’s held that against me.”

“Held it against you?” Katalina rose an eyebrow. Kara nodded, continuing on with the more painful portion of her story.

“Recently, after the loss of...everything, he’s gotten more into his alcohol. He’s always been a heavy drinker, but now...now it’s become something dangerous. His alcoholism coupled with his growing depression from losing everyone in the snap and his brother for what we both know is the final time...he thinks that I’m somehow stowing him away. He’s convinced that I’m hiding Loki, claims that I’m keeping him away from the public eye so that he doesn’t have to see the self-proclaimed ‘monster’ that Thor’s become. Every time I try to tell him that I’m not hiding him I break down crying because I _wish_ I was hiding Loki. I wish what happened to him didn’t happen, or that it was just some convoluted joke. But...as far as I’m aware, it isn’t. I’ve gone four years without him, and at this point I’m convinced that I’m going to have to spend forever without him.”

Katalina was silent the entire time that Kara spoke about Thor and his disbelief in Loki’s death. The woman opened her mouth to speak, but couldn’t quite find the words. Nothing that would make Kara feel any better, anyway.

Kara hiccupped, the tears suddenly streaming down her face again.

“Crap,” Kara quickly went to rub her eyes again like she kept having to do all day that day, sniffling, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to start crying about him all over again—”

“Miss Kara, I don’t mind. You’re vulnerable still, even after so long,” Katalina moved her hands in the circular motion, opening a portal beneath her and Kara. The girls fell for a moment before landing in the chairs they had left behind. Kara, though startled, only extended her arms out so she didn’t lose balance on her own chair. A large man of some sort of Asian descent wearing odd clothes similar to Katalina’s looked at them, a tray of newly brewed tea in his hands.

“Kingsley, your tea is ready for you and your guest.”

“Thank you, Wong, you can place it on the table here.” Katalina gave the man a warm smile as he nodded, placing the tray down and disappearing to who knows where. Kara lifted her tea cup from where she had left it, taking a sip and realizing the cold tea she had left behind was replaced with the freshly brewed one that Wong had just brought in.


	5. CHAPTER FOUR

“Really? You’ll allow me to stay here?”

“Of course,” Katalina said, walking with her guest down one of the many winding hallways of the Sanctum. The woman of the arts finally took a few minutes to actually tell Kara about where she was and what this place was called.

The Sanctum Sanctorum, located on 177A Bleecker Street, was home to many of the Earth’s magical relics. As informed by Katalina, Kara learned that the Sactorum was not the only one of its kind; there had been three of them and all the Sanctorums were connected to create a barrier to protect Earth. When Strange was learning his mystic arts alongside Katalina, however, one of the Sactorums, the one in London, had been destroyed by the threat Kaecilius.

“I think he had been a kind man once,” Katalina had explained as the girls walked through the winding hallways, “but he wanted power, and when he got it, he became a nasty threat. Thankfully, Stephen was able to take care of him as well as Dormammu.”

“So...this Doctor Stephen Strange,” Kara nudged the girl beside her, giggling, “tell me more about him.”

Katalina’s face turned flush, rolling her eyes, “Do you always change emotions so quickly? I swear you were about to start crying some moments ago.”

“Oh, trust me, I am about to burst into a mental breakdown at any moment, I’m just good at pushing those emotions deep down until everything boils too far for me to handle,” Kara said bluntly, “but I’m curious. Was he..?”

“Now isn’t the time to explain everything,” Katalina interrupted, stopping in front of a door and causing the smaller girl to run into her arm, “but I know what you’re thinking, and the simple answer is yes. Are you satisfied?”

“I hope he was cute,” Kara smiled to herself, opening the door to the room.

“He was,” Katalina muttered under her breath, just loud enough for Kara to hear and giggle over. Katalina’s face flushed crimson with embarrassment, “I invite you to sleep in my guest bedroom and this is my payment? Giggling like a teenage girl about my love life?”

“I’m sorry! I…” Kara turned to look at her newfound friend, leaning her head against the door frame, “I know what happened to him. Kind of, anyway. Before Thor got too angry to talk to me anymore, he told me some of the names of people who were dusted that he learned about after Tony Stark arrived back from space. I don’t know Stephen at all, but I know he meant a lot to you like how...my love means so much to me. I’m sorry that you lost him, Katalina.”

The other woman oddly seemed surprised. Did she not know that Kara knew about how Strange had been dusted like how Katalina knew almost everything else about the Asgardian woman? Katalina shook her head, dismissing both Kara’s confusion and her own, “Thank you for the condolences, Kara, but I don’t need them. Stephen...he is a master of the mystic arts, and he is this Sanctorum’s master because of his strength and his wit. He is-”—Katalina cleared her throat to correct herself—“-_was_ the keeper of the Time Stone, the Sorcerer Supreme like the Ancient One before him, for the same reasons. Whatever happened that made him give Thanos the Time Stone, he didn’t do it out of fear for his own life. Though I don’t know his exact reasoning, I know that he became this Sanctorum’s master because of his strengths. He knows what the Earth needs, what the Avengers need, to beat Thanos, and if the Earth and Avengers needed to suffer now to succeed later on, then I say to leave it be.”

Kara stared intensely at the other woman, taken aback by her words. Up until this point, Kara didn’t know much about Strange himself. She didn’t know what he looked like or what his story was or why he was so important to everything that happened with Thanos; however, from the way Katalina talked about him, he was a lot more important than Kara thought. He wasn’t just important to Katalina or the Sanctorum she and Kara stood in or the relics found inside the Sanctorum. He was important to the world and everyone who had been suffering for the past years since Thanos’s appearance on Earth.

“Listen, we can talk more about this tomorrow,” Katalina broke the silence, turning to go to her own bedroom for the night, “I’ll tell you anything you need to know when you’ve gotten some rest. You don’t look like you’ve slept in four whole years.”

  


☆ ☆ ☆

  


“Thor, bro, this guy is trying to hurt my feelings again.”

The god of thunder only vaguely stirred from his slumber on his recliner. He hadn’t showered for a while now, his own scent getting into his nostrils and making him nauseous. _Disgusting_, he thought to himself as he looked towards the television.

Korg, one of the friends that Thor had befriended on Sakaar many years ago before what happened to Asgard, had moved in with the god, taking notice of his loneliness and figuring the man needed someone to talk to on a daily basis. Sitting beside him was Miek, a fellow friend from Sakaar that joined Korg and Thor on their escape from the planet those many years ago. Korg sat on the couch, face glued to the television as he played some video game that Thor had forgotten the name of in his grogginess.

“What was that? What’d he say?” Thor question, standing from his chair to look at the television. Suddenly, his heart sank.

Korg’s eyes were glued on the screen, and Thor looked at the names of the people who were playing the game online with his friend. There were normal names, like noobmaster69 and other dumb names of teenage Midgardians going through puberty. And then he saw a name that hurt him more than anything else.

fuckthedusted2017.

The god acted before he could think; he ran at the television and smashed it, his arms swinging down with such strength he could have crushed the television stand, too. The glass of the screen crashed into his hands, stabbing him in many places, embedding into the skin that had softened from the god’s years of lazing about in his cottage rather than fighting like he had done years before the snap. His forearms weren’t safe either, littered with an equal amount of scars from the glass. Thor huffed and took a deep breath, suddenly realizing what he had done.

“Damn it,” he grumbled, stumbling back away from the smashed television and staring at his hands. His eyes were glossy as he stared at the skin that was now broken and bloody, shards of glass poking out and glistening in the soft sunlight as it peeked from behind the closed curtains and blinds. _Damn it_.

Korg went up to him, looking at the scars as Miek went to take down the wobbling television.

“I got you, bro. C’mon, let’s get to the bathroom to get your hands cleaned up.”

  


Thor sat on the edge of the bathtub, Korg kneeling down and picking out the pieces of glass with tweezers. He may have been a rock creature, but he was being incredibly gentle towards the man’s wounds as he cleaned them.

“I’m sorry, Korg,” Thor grumbled under his breath, his eyes unmoving from his own hands as he watched the glass be removed, “I didn’t mean to ruin your television.”

“No problem, bro, I saw the guy’s username too,” Korg replied, finally wrapping Thor’s hands up with bandages, still gentle towards him, “it’s really insensitive to everyone. He probably didn’t lose anyone, but others did. I’m sorry I didn’t warn you beforehand.”

“No, don’t apologize. You can’t control what other people call themselves on those online games of yours.” Thor grunted, standing from the edge of the tub and looking at himself in the mirror. He looked so greasy and sickly from his lack of personal care for the past years since the snap. Korg stood behind him, looking at Thor in the mirror.

“Bro, you look horrible,” the rock man said, touching his friend’s shoulder lightly. Thor’s face stayed right ahead at his own reflection.

“Yeah, I know.”

“You should shower.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Korg left the bathroom quietly, leaving the god of thunder to his own devices. He leaned over the sink, staring more and more intensely at his reflection.

He looked so tired and so weak. His eyes were bloodshot from his lack of sleep and his years of crying on a regular, almost daily basis. The bags under them may as well have been designer, dark purple and sunken into his skull. His hair was longer now, much longer than it had ever been in all his thousand and a half years of existence, and it had gone unwashed for a while now. It looked matted and smelled even worse, however that was possible. He had lost a lot of his muscle mass, probably from staying inside his little cottage and never going outside like he would have before the purple Titan, and instead it was replaced with the years of junk and alcohol he had consumed regularly since the snap. Thor glared at himself. Who allowed him to look this bad?

Well, he did. Of course he did. But Thor didn’t want to admit that; he had taken such good care of himself for so many centuries, he didn’t want to believe that he would let himself look like this. He didn’t want to believe that he’d become such a depressed mess that he lost everything that he did so much work to obtain.

Kendall wouldn’t be proud of him for looking like this. She would have looked at him and pinched her nose and squinted her eyes, waving him away from her. She had been mute so she couldn’t tell him he smelled so bad or looked so horrible verbally, but her refusing a kiss or even a hug from Thor would have been enough to knock some sense into him to take a shower or a bath or something to make himself smell better. She had done it a few times before, back when she was still alive, when Thor had gone off to who knows where and killed Odin knows what and smelled so goddamn awful she would have gagged if it didn’t crush the house off its foundation. Kendall would have probably died seeing her lover like he was right now if she weren’t already dead.

The god took a shower and put on some newer clothes, some that Valkyrie had been so kind as to wash for him when Thor was having a hard time in the last week or so and felt like he couldn’t walk out of his cottage without crying upon seeing the remaining citizens of New Asgard. He rebandaged his hands and arms with some difficulty, but the bandages were finally on and keeping his hands from bleeding. They ached, but it was the price he paid for smashing the television.

Korg looked at the man as he returned, smiling widely, “Look at that! You look a ton better already, bro. That shower did some good for you.”

“Yeah,” Thor muttered as he sat back into his recliner and taking a greedy gulp of the mead he had left before falling asleep earlier, “yeah, it did.”


End file.
